Local NGOs have a key role to play in a post-MDGs environment

Sponsored featureSTARS Foundation roundtable participants discuss the role and relevance of local NGOs in development – from embracing individual donors with less restrictions to accessing remote areas

An Aisda health worker campaigns to stop female genital mutilation practice during a busy market day in Delafagi in the Afar region of eastern Ethopia. Photograph: Kristian Buus

The Guardian recently hosted a STARS Foundation roundtable event on post-MDGs environment and the role of local NGOs in the development process. It brought together some of this year's STARS Foundation Impact Award winners to discuss the issues small and local NGOs face, and the relevance of MDGs to their work. Donors and foundations who were eager to connect with such NGOs, collectively covering all eight MDGs, also participated in the discussion.

Fadekemi Akinfaderin-Agarau, director of Education as a Vaccine, an organisation working with children and teenagers in Nigeria, said: "The reality with the MDGs is that the connections between them don't seem so apparent on paper. But when you work with people and children on the ground, you start to make those connections. So there's no way you can work in HIV which is MDG6 without working on MDG5 [maternal health], for example."

Some felt the MDGs were too narrow in focus. Masresha Andarge, executive director of Action for Integrated Sustainable Development Association (Aisda) that works with nomadic communities in remote regions of Ethiopia, said if the 2015 MDGs fail, it would be because of the areas that were still unreached and untouched."MDGs will never reach those areas, there are no reports, no one goes there ... the MDGs are not as simple as we see them on paper and on TV."

Chairing the discussion, Liz Ford, Guardian global development deputy editor, asked how such NGOs accessed finance. Maria Neophytou, head of communications for donor organisation, Ark, said that "strengthening the capacity of local organisations" is key to her organisation. Rachel Harrington, associate director of the Coutts Institute, said her organisation actively sought to invest in local NGOs.

While this was welcome news, Saima Rashid, training director of Developments in Literacy, providing schooling and teacher training in poor areas of Pakistan, said that 50% of her funding comes from private donors who let the charity decide how to use it. "Of course, unrestricted doesn't mean we don't audit it – we have an external auditor. But we prefer such donations to the other 40-50% that comes from donors ... where it is restricted and doesn't cover all the costs." Rashid also said that there were barriers to adopting a social enterprise model, making profits from training in more affluent urban areas turned-off local donors.

STARS Foundation chief executive Muna Wehbe said their research of about 600 previous applicants found that 92% believed funders should be more willing to take risks and fund innovative projects.

Sister Maria Victoria Sta. Ana, executive director of the Laura Vicuña Foundation, working with street children to stop child exploitation in the Philippines, also said that three quarters of her funding comes from individual donors because it was unrestricted. "We are really able to do more, to innovate programmes without being asked can you do this or do that. Our foundation is made of a very small core staff of around 15 people, but we're able to reach 3,000 children a year in far-flung areas."

Aisda went for two years without securing any funding at all in Ethiopia, said Andarge. Donor-auditors demanded company accounts before considering an investment, but Aisda needed investment in order to have any company accounts. Andarge eventually persuaded a Norwegian development fund to see their work and received seed funding of $15,000 (£9,215) for three months. After the trial period, Aisda secured $300,000 (£184,385) for three years.

Teresa Verdial de Araújo, chief executive of Fundasaun Alola, a small NGO from Timor-Leste working in maternal and infant health, talked about short-termism of international funders. "We hope to start with projects of at least two to three years because that is good for us to set-it up, achieve an impact, and measure the impact. Otherwise it's one year or shorter, and also [they] keep asking for feedback reports – the duration of projects is key."

This, said Robin D'Alessandro, chief executive of the Vitol Charitable Foundation, can be a problem for foundations too.

"We don't want any organisation to get dependent on us ... we're often the extra 25% at the end of a DfID project, but at the end of four years they move on and sometimes there's no one left to fund those great projects."

Yasser Daoud, director of Development Action Without Borders (Naba'a), working primarily with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, believed that donations are too often tied to a political agenda. "In our region this is the case. If you are related to this party you will have funds from this group; if you are related to another party you get funds from a totally different donor. And in the middle you have the UN agencies ... with bureaucracy, high admin costs and high salaries."

Daoud noted an Italian NGO partner with extortionately high expatriate costs. "You can't go out to visit people sleeping in the mud and arrive in a 4x4. You can't go and visit injured people with three or four security guards following you. There is something wrong."

Worse still, said Wehbe, a lot of the small organisations that STARS Foundation supports find their staff are poached by the very international agencies purporting to help them. This, said Akinfaderin-Agarau, was her "number one headache" in Nigeria. She named several major international NGOs who have taken her staff in the past year alone. "We can't compete in terms of salaries. And then at the end of the year when people assess you they say 'oh you have a high staff turnover'! ... It is ridiculous – you can't say you're bringing international volunteers to support the capacity of my staff when you are taking my staff."

However, David Gold, chief executive of Prospectus, warned that it can be a dangerous line of argument to pursue given a growing public scepticism about international aid money. "What might not happen is that the money would get redirected to you, instead it might be stopped altogether."

However Farah Jirdeh, director of the Pharo Foundation, welcomed a potential backlash from western taxpayers. "I really think that the damage international NGOs do locally is far reaching; the payments they make inflate the markets, create false economies, they wield amazing influence with governments and government entities ... it is far more damaging than the good that comes out. I hope DfID's funds are really slashed ... Local civil societies are hampered and never will develop if this [aid money] continues."

If that were to happen, asked Ford, would that open the door to private sector involvement and with it labour rights issues, profiteering, and less democratic responsibility? D'Alessandro argued that the private sector increasingly needs to spend CSR funds, and NGOs need funds, so such partnerships are imperative.

Jirdeh and Verdial de Araújo, felt that the next MDGs were already decided, a fait accompli. However, Ark's Neophytou said: "While there are a lot of issues already on the table, I think there's a lot of live issues where civil society has to weigh in, you can't give up ... it is an inter-governmental process and it will go back to the countries to negotiate that framework. That's when there's an opportunity to have a real influence."

To round up the discussion, Ford asked everyone to say in a single sentence what they hoped to see emerge post-2015. The room seemed agreed: "Go local and build partnerships."